During the recent past, it has become the generally accepted practice, in the retail sales industry, to utilize what is known in the packaging manufacturing industry as "point of sales" packaging for the majority of products to be offered for sale in a retail outlet. This particular practice, as generally would be expected, has forced the package manufacturing industry to both develop and implement new equipment and operating procedures. Such new equipment and operating procedures being necessary so that significant improvement in the quality of printing could be economically achieved. In other words, the former "brown box" would no longer be an acceptable package for products offered for sale in a retail outlet.
As a result, flexographic printing was introduced into such package printing industry and such flexographic printing equipment is now in widespread use. See, for example, an article published in the December, 1979 issue of Box Board Containers titled "It's Time for a Change in Flexo". As pointed out in this particular article, flexographic printing equipment entered the package printing industry in the 1960's. It was at this time that packaging converters began installing the necessary equipment to initiate use of the flexographic printing process. It is important to note that such packaging converters had the capability of now printing, slotting, folding, gluing, die-cutting and bundling in a true production line manner with this new flexographic equipment.
This change in printing equipment to flexography also offered the potential for extended capabilities and other improvements in package printing. This, in addition, to all the advantages of the in-line operations discussed above. This was not the case, however, because these additional benefits were not immediately taken advantage of by the packaging converters. For example, even with this new flexographic printing equipment and process, the packaging converters continued to use the same old style printing plate systems that they had been using prior to the introduction of the flexo printing system. This outdated printing plate system consisted of a relatively thick rubber plate secured to a fabric-like material which, in turn, was secured to a carrier material.
It is also generally well known, in the prior art, to use a substantially T-shaped member in order to both align and secure one end of a printing plate, carried on a sheet material, to the printing plate cylinder. Such securement of the printing plate occurring substantially parallel to the longitudinal axis of the printing plate cylinder. In this case, the printing plate is disposed on a vinyl-like sheet member which, in turn, is positioned for engagement with the working surface of such printing plate cylinder. The T-shaped member is secured to one end of the vinyl-like sheet and the axially opposed other end of such vinyl-like sheet is secured to the printing plate cylinder with either tape or strap-like members.
This particular fastening system for the printing plate is commonly known in the package printing industry as the Matthews Fast-Loc. This system, which is in widespread use in the packaging industry, results in a significant reduction in down time of the printing press being required in order to achieve proper alignment of the printing plate on the working surface of the printing plate cylinder. In this manner, economy of operation could be achieved by the packaging convertors.